“Two other girls, younger than those that have been baptized, appear to have obtained light and hope in Christ. ‘Out of the mouth of babes and sucklings Thou hast perfected praise.’ One of them, Mee Youk, about eight years old, gives as clear, satisfactory evidence of real conversion as any of the older girls. The other, Mee Kway, like our departed Mee Shway-ee, was rescued at Amherst from miserable slavery. She has hitherto given us very little pleasure, but is now led to see that she has been an uncommonly wicked child, and to feel a humble, penitent disposition.”
But even these babes in Christ were not exempt from suffering persecution. Mee Tan-goung had just been baptized. Her eldest sister, after having experienced real and pungent convictions of divine truth, had at length been induced by her mother’s alternate promises and threatenings deliberately to reject the Saviour.
“Mee Tan-goung’s mother came early,” writes Mr. Judson, “before any of us were up, and having made her elder daughter, Mee Lau, open the door of the school _zayat_, she fell upon her younger daughter, abusing and beating her, until, fearing that she should alarm the house, she went off. Soon after, however, she came again, and finding her daughter outside, she beat her on the head with an umbrella, and threatened to sell her for a slave. She then went into town, and after raising a tumult in the market-place, and declaring that her daughter had entered into a religion which prevented her lying and cheating, so that she was quite lost to all purposes of trade, she carried the alarming tale to the mothers of the other two girls who were baptized yesterday. One of them, the mother of Mee Nen-mah, who has been most violent heretofore, came in a rage to Mrs. Wade (brother Wade and myself being absent at our _zayats_), and after using as bad language as she dared, she ran down to the schoolroom, seized her daughter by the hair, and dragged her outdoors toward a pile of wood, where she would soon have armed herself with a weapon, had not Mrs. Wade interfered, and rescued the victim; upon which the mother went off, muttering vengeance. The girls bore all this abuse in silent submission, and really manifested something of the spirit of martyrs. All three are taken into the house for the present, lest their infuriated relatives should make an assault upon them by night.”
Poor little Mee Aa, who had been baptized, was living in great fear. She daily expected her mother from Amherst, and knew that she would take her away instantly, and would use all the means in her power to make her renounce the Christian religion. But Mee Aa was to be pleasantly disappointed. Instead of being remanded by her mother to the shadows of heathenism, she was permitted to lead that mother into the light of the Gospel.
“Soon after that date, Mee Aa came trembling, one morning, to Mrs. Wade, with the alarming news that her mother had just arrived at the landing-place, with the intention, doubtless, of taking her away by force; and what should she do? She was told to go and meet her mother, and to pray as she went. But the poor girl need not have been alarmed. She had been incessantly praying for her mother ever since she had learned to pray for herself; and God had heard her prayers, and softened her mother’s heart. So when she heard that her daughter was actually baptized, she only made up a queer face, like a person choking, and said, ‘It was _so_, was it not? I hear that some quite die under the operation.’ This speech we all considered encouraging. And, accordingly, she soon settled down among us, drank in the truth from her daughter’s lips, and then followed her example.”
But the most pathetic story of all is that of Mee Shway-ee, a little child, whom the missionaries rescued from the barbarities of heathenism. They brought her with them from Amherst. When they first heard of her she was a slave-girl, five years old. Her master was a Moor. He afterward turned out to be her own brother, who had formed the diabolical project of killing her by inches. Mr. Judson got possession of the little girl by threatening her master with all the penalties of the English law. Her wretched condition is thus described in Mrs. Wade’s journal: